40% Blade Flurry

GC said:

. We feel like the implementation of Blade Flurry on live forces rogues to go Combat on any cleave fights, while leaving Combat too far behind on any single target fights. It's fine if the rogue specs have niches, but the niches shouldn't be so rigid that you don't feel like you have any choice in spec. Blade Flurry will be how Combat does 2-5 target AoE damage. In the next PTR build, it deals 40% of normal damage to up to 4 additional targets, for a 20% energy regen reduction.

If this goes live, blade flurry will:

1)- Be worth pressing for two targets, but not be great on them. Essentially, we abandon this niche to other melee- warriors mostly.
2)- Be about equal to our current blade flurry on 3-4 targets. Blade flurry on live still does acceptable damage (versus pressing fan + CT, or respeccing to sub or muti and pressing fan + CT, or even versus sitting the rogue to bring in a three target king)- the only harsh thing will be that blade flurry is much harder to aim than other aoe moves.
3)- Possibly be top at 5 targets sustained and grouped. Unsure about this, but on live your flurry hits for 100% of your physical hits, and here it would be 0.4*4=160% of your physical hits. Since the live one works out generally to be something like 1.6x your total damage (because poison isn't forked, and the energy cost adds up), we can extrapolate and assume around 2.0X, 25% more damage under ideal circumstances than live. I think that's enough to catch most other aoe in that exact situation, but I could be missing something (like survival hunter or whatever).

Either way, while I'd prefer blade flurry not be dorked with at all, this is a vastly improved thing versus the old one, has a place on our bars, and offers us a niche (one that doesn't ever really happen, but whatever :P ).

They need to promote FoK and CT use by buffing their damage (either by a raw damage increase or letting them be cleaved by our new Blade Flurry)and making FoK advance Bandit's Guile. It also seems quite likely that they'll need to increase Blade Flurry cleave radius if they don't want to completely kill the skill .

As I said on another post, I would rather take a main target damage reduction while Blade Flurry is active instead of the reduced energy regen; this way our rotation wouldn't feel gimped while cleaving.

Well, Fan and CT are actually just fine- just not for combat. Making blade flurry into this is, I think, probably ok. I would prefer it if it was something like 60% second target, 30% each additional- or just leave it as a two target- but this should be ok. I do think the cone size needs to be increased, it is very punishing and already dictates where we stand a whole lot.

What I like is that on two targets, a 40% blade flurry is worth pressing. It's not great, but the 25% one was just too goddamned dumb.

As I said on another post, I would rather take a main target damage reduction while Blade Flurry is active instead of the reduced energy regen; this way our rotation wouldn't feel gimped while cleaving.

I kind of like the deliberate feel- and I don't have to energy cap. The only thing I don't like about it is that you feel that there's some way to make more damage by turning it off (and this was probably going to be the case at 25%) when energy is low and flurry is off cooldown. But I doubt that's an issue at 40%, and it lets us pool in yellow pleasantly a bit too.

I actually like this change. It's appropriate, but 40% to every target may be a bit much in 3-5 target scenarios--assuming they're all in melee range. They're going to have to increase it to maybe 8-10yd if they want it to be viable as a multi-target/aoe ability.

I'd rather blade flurry just be capped at 3 targets and have them buff FoK/CT for combat instead for 5+ targets.

2 targets, 50 percent, no energy reduction (Arms warriors don't get reduced Rage regen from Sweeping Strikes, do they) would be a better way to go with Blade Flurry.
Agreed that FoK's direct damage and Crimson Tempest's bleed damage should be buffed. Best way to buff Crimson Tempest without messing with the numbers would be "If one of the targets has the Revealing Strike debuff, then Crimson Tempest will act as if all targets are affected by Revealing Strike. OR make Crimson Tempest spread Revealing Strike. That'd be cool.

To be honest, Blade Flurry is a terrible ability in terms of design. The fact that they want us to simply toggle it on/off for AOE and not use a proper AOE rotation is silly. They should have left it at a Cleave and nerfed it to 60-70%, and then buffed FoK and CT properly to give us comparable AOE dps to Assassination.

all they had to do is buff FOK and CT by like 200%+ but instead we get this bf 40% 4 targets they need to increase the range by like 10 yards to make it effective

If they buffed FOK and CT damage to make it worth using as Combat then it would make it ridiculously overpowered for Assassination.

If they could make Blade Flurry do less and less damage the more targets in range to cleave that might be something that would work. For example if only 1 additional target was in cleave range Blade Flurry would do 75% damage to that target. 2 targets it would then do 35% damage to both of them and the damage diminishes the more targets are being cleaved. Something along those lines.

I don't feel that Combat needs a top notch competitive AOE but definitely needs to retain it's niche for being a powerful cleave spec.

30 rage for 10 seconds of Sweeping Strikes.
In my book, I'd say that's paltry compared to the amount of energy you're probably losing by having Blade Flurry up on 2 targets at 40% damage transmission.

Warriors currently in MoP aren't like Warriors before MoP. Rage is actually a lot harder to come by compared to before, and rage you spend to activate Sweeping Strikes is lost and can't be used for abilities to make good use of the Sweeping Strikes. Sweeping Strikes also only does half damage and not a full 100% like Blade Flurry used to give. If you absolutely have to compare this to Rogues imagine having to pay 60 energy for 10 seconds of Blade Flurry, 50% Blade Flurry for that matter.

Warriors currently in MoP aren't like Warriors before MoP. Rage is actually a lot harder to come by compared to before, and rage you spend to activate Sweeping Strikes is lost and can't be used for abilities to make good use of the Sweeping Strikes. Sweeping Strikes also only does half damage and not a full 100% like Blade Flurry used to give. If you absolutely have to compare this to Rogues imagine having to pay 60 energy for 10 seconds of Blade Flurry, 50% Blade Flurry for that matter.

Blade Flurry is still far more superior.

Yea need all that rage to spend it on slam and slam oh yea thats the only thing costs rage that you would use unless you are overflowing on rage.

Yea need all that rage to spend it on slam and slam oh yea thats the only thing costs rage that you would use unless you are overflowing on rage.

Either way, Arms "cleave" potential is beat by not just Blade Flurry, but by Fury warriors. The TG warrior in my 10-heroic raid is always on-par with my Blade Flurry on that fight. I don't see how 5.2 Blade Flurry will keep up with Whirlwind, Meat Cleaver (Raging Blow) and Thunder Clap/Deeps Wounds.

Either way, Arms "cleave" potential is beat by not just Blade Flurry, but by Fury warriors. The TG warrior in my 10-heroic raid is always on-par with my Blade Flurry on that fight. I don't see how 5.2 Blade Flurry will keep up with Whirlwind, Meat Cleaver (Raging Blow) and Thunder Clap/Deeps Wounds.

Thunder clap does not apply deep wounds for fury warriors, only arms/prot.

I actually like this change. It's appropriate, but 40% to every target may be a bit much in 3-5 target scenarios--assuming they're all in melee range. They're going to have to increase it to maybe 8-10yd if they want it to be viable as a multi-target/aoe ability.

I'd rather blade flurry just be capped at 3 targets and have them buff FoK/CT for combat instead for 5+ targets.

It's not too much, as many pointed out, there will be at best one raid encounter each tier where you are able to cleave 4 or 5 targets with a short range cleave. OF course for AOE, combat makes a big BOOM now, since basically, it works great on trash. Most cleaves are two targets, that problem is solved.

For Challenge Modes gold runs, it might be too good, but there's anyway no balancing currently for that content. The 40% *4 targets implementation looks great imo.

---------- Post added 2013-01-12 at 12:24 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Carp The Fish

Either way, Arms "cleave" potential is beat by not just Blade Flurry, but by Fury warriors. The TG warrior in my 10-heroic raid is always on-par with my Blade Flurry on that fight. I don't see how 5.2 Blade Flurry will keep up with Whirlwind, Meat Cleaver (Raging Blow) and Thunder Clap/Deeps Wounds.

Vut to be honest, warriors are by far superior to all other melees in that corner. It's kind of sucking that warriors always got a special treatment like a pure dps class. They have high mobitlity, high execute, cleave burst. Most other dps lack in that corner.

---------- Post added 2013-01-12 at 12:26 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Carp The Fish

Either way, Arms "cleave" potential is beat by not just Blade Flurry, but by Fury warriors. The TG warrior in my 10-heroic raid is always on-par with my Blade Flurry on that fight. I don't see how 5.2 Blade Flurry will keep up with Whirlwind, Meat Cleaver (Raging Blow) and Thunder Clap/Deeps Wounds.

Well warriors are very good on this fight because they can execute on every leg, so they execute a lot more often and get a big dps gain. Cleaving is only part of their strength on that fight.

If they buffed FOK and CT damage to make it worth using as Combat then it would make it ridiculously overpowered for Assassination.

If they could make Blade Flurry do less and less damage the more targets in range to cleave that might be something that would work. For example if only 1 additional target was in cleave range Blade Flurry would do 75% damage to that target. 2 targets it would then do 35% damage to both of them and the damage diminishes the more targets are being cleaved. Something along those lines.

I don't feel that Combat needs a top notch competitive AOE but definitely needs to retain it's niche for being a powerful cleave spec.

They can easily buff it by giving FOK and CT a combat only passive ability that increases their damage.
Gosh, strange nobody thought of that at Blizzard or at last never mentioned that thought process.

People can be whoever they choose to be on the internet - It is strange that so many people choose to be stupid.

every time I see someone mentioning the word "rouge" I get the urge to say "yes, we are overpowdered"...